National Museum of Australia

Continental radiations record the long-term interplay between environmental change, ecological opportunity, and lineage diversification across large geographic scales. The gecko family Diplodactylidae represents one such radiation with ~200 species distributed across Australia, New Caledonia, and Aotearoa New Zealand, occupying ecological forms ranging from burrow-dwelling desert specialists to canopy climbers, and diversifying over a ~45 Ma history shaped by dramatic continental environmental change. Using ~5000 nuclear loci, we reconstructed phylogenetic relationships and divergence times, estimated ancestral ecology and biomes, and modeled the effects of habitat use on diversification and morphology. Crown diplodactylids originated in the mid-Eocene (~45 Ma), with the core Australian clade radiating in the Oligocene (~28 Ma), substantially younger than previous estimates. Ancestral state estimation indicated arboreal origins in mesic environments, followed by repeated transitions into open habitats and expansion into semi-arid and arid biomes. Diversification rates vary among habitat use but differences were moderate. Size varies with habitat use, but tail morphology is phylogenetically conserved despite dominating overall variation. These patterns indicate that environmental change and biome transformation generated ecological opportunity, promoting diversification through repeated habitat transitions and morphological divergence, providing a macroevolutionary framework linking environmental change, ecological expansion, and trait evolution in a continental radiation.

Abstract University research has a vital role to play in addressing complex societal challenges. The research impact (RI) agenda should enable this but is critiqued for creating an audit culture focused narrowly on economic returns on investment and university rankings. There is a need for alternative approaches that better support research for societal benefit. A current hiatus in research assessment processes in Australia provides an opportunity to explore alternatives. In this study, we elicited responses from 53 university staff in academic and professional roles to explore what constitutes research impact in practice, and what helps to achieve it. The responses highlight a disconnect between the current institutional framing of research impact and both the practices and values of those seeking to create societal benefit through research. We identify four tensions between the motivations and practice of research staff on one hand and the research impact agenda on the other. Tensions related to (1) narrow definitions of impact inadequately encompassing valuable work; (2) the premise of linear impact pathways inaccurately portraying the complexity of impact; (3) assessment rewarding individual endeavour over collaboration; and (4) assessment focusing on auditing rather than learning through evaluation. We take these findings and apply current theories of public and cultural value to offer ‘research value’ as an alternative approach to address the four tensions and nurture research for societal benefit.

ABSTRACT With the introduction of Critical Heritage Studies (CHS) in China, a double standard has emerged regarding understanding the authorised heritage discourse (AHD) domestically and abroad. Some researchers are generally critical of Eurocentric conceptions of heritage, while only partially abandoning criticism of authoritarian ideology and unequal social structures when confronted with problems in local official heritage practices. The paper outlines two common theoretical positions for dealing with this double standard: One is ‘rejecting’ or ‘reconsidering’ the AHD concept on the grounds of the specific Chinese context, arguing that the local official heritage discourse, unlike that of ‘the West’, is useful and able to engage with the community. The other is to achieve a de-politicised CHS by emphasising ‘pure’ interaction processes in heritage practices, moving towards loosely structured social relations between stakeholders with plural values. This paper explores the irrationality of these two positions, arguing that they ignore, to varying degrees, the structural constraints of promoting public participation of underprivileged groups in the Chinese context. It raises concerns about how the CHS approach can practically benefit social justice rather than being appropriated when working with epistemologies of heritage in different cultural, language and political contexts.

Depuis plusieurs décennies, les membres du peuple Walbunja (nation Yuin) aspirent à exercer leur souveraineté et affermir leur influence sur les projets de développement économique et de gestion environnementale concernant leur territoires terrestres et marins. Situé sur la côte sud-est de la Nouvelle Galles du Sud en Australie, le territoire des Walbunja est sujet à des pressions intenses, toujours grandissantes, liées à l’expansion urbaine, à une industrie touristique florissante, à l’agriculture et à la pêche commerciale. Cet article explore les opportunités et les défis politiques et ontologiques que représentent la cartographie collaborative et récits numériques autochtones pour soutenir les projets de résurgence de gestion environnementale walbunja. Ces outils numériques peuvent-ils contribuer aux projets de décolonisation envisagés par les Walbunja et autres groupes autochtones ? Peuvent-ils également favoriser l’émergence de synergies entre différentes conceptions et relations au territoire ? Ou conduisent-ils plutôt à l’alourdissement de l’enchevêtrement territorial et ontologique dans l’espace numérique ?

ABSTRACT Advancing Critical Heritage Studies: the Next 10 Years, which focuses on the growth of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) since 2012, and the development of and challenges facing critical heritage studies in general. The special issue is a collection of short articles that, rather than present academic debates written in expected academic uses and conventions, offers a glimpse into the discussions that define the growing field of heritage studies today. Minimally referenced but rich in archival information, the contributions are records of past and present motivations, solutions, and oversights that drove the first ten years of work by different members of the ACHS Executive Committee, ACHS Chapters, and other contributors. As the issue’s editors, we offer these discussions as a companion to the growth of critical heritage studies, and to encourage both support and critique for the ways in which an organization navigates the complicated landscapes of heritage expertise.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) held its ninth plenary session in hybrid form at Bonn, Germany in July 2022. The plenary had a packed agenda with assessments on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species and Values of Biodiversity to consider, as well as discuss a "Nature Future Framework" and a scoping document for business and biodiversity. Here, we present key issues that emerged from the plenary and suggest some matters Platform members need to consider for the future.

Abstract Recognizing two decades of failure to achieve global goals and targets, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are in the final phase of negotiating a Post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework for the conservation, sustainable use and benefit sharing of biodiversity. The framework attempts to set out pathways, goals and targets for the next decade to achieve positive biodiversity change.This perspective intends to help that framework set people firmly as part of nature, not apart from it. Despite work done so far through four meetings, new thinking and focus is still needed on ‘what’ changes must be conceptualized and implemented, and ‘how’ those changes are to be delivered. To help achieve that new thinking, as a broad range of people, many with a focus on aquatic systems, we highlight six key foci that offer potential to strengthen delivery of the framework and break the ‘business as usual’ logjam.These foci are as follows: (i) a reframing of the narrative of ‘people's relationship with the rest of nature’ and emphasize the crucial role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in delivering positive biodiversity change; (ii) moving beyond a focus on species and places by prioritizing ecosystem function and resilience; (iii) supporting a diversity of top‐down and bottom‐up governance processes; (iv) embracing new technologies to make and measure progress; (v) linking business more effectively with biodiversity and (vi) leveraging the power of international agencies and programmes.Given they are linked to a greater or lesser degree, implementing these six foci together will lead to a much‐needed broadening of the framework, especially those of business and broader urban civil society, as well as those of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog.

Historically, museums have catered to and represented some individuals, groups and histories to the exclusion and detriment of others. In his critique of this tendency Chris Taylor conceives museums ‘as instruments that intentionally shape cultural norms and values based on the dominant culture for society’. Like Taylor, many of those who are concerned by the exclusion of marginalised groups and histories advocate social inclusion as an ideal and a museological practice. Consequently, the last decade or so has seen the emergence of a number of temporary lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer plus (LGBTQ+) history exhibitions. At the same time, the active collecting of (what are perceived as) LGBTQ + objects in order to tell LGTBQ + histories has found its way onto the agenda of a growing number of museums. As we have argued in detail elsewhere, while such responses to past exclusions (and the material effects they produce) are not without value, they nevertheless all-too-often unintentionally reproduce the same logic that shaped exclusionary museological practices. In this article, we will elaborate what we see as the problematic epistemological underpinnings of social inclusion through the exploration of four assumptions that perpetuate heteronormative museological practice.

interpretations have been implicated in undermining cultural

Migrant camps were unsettling spaces for newly arrived families in post-war Australia. Post-WWII refugees and assisted migrants arriving from 1947 to the early 1970s labelled these temporary accommodation centres run by the Department of Immigration “camps”. Their ambiguity as spaces of refuge and containment persists in memory. Hundreds of thousands of assisted migrants and refugees passed through these camps, which were established from 1947 and progressively shut down from the late 1960s. This chapter will analyse memories of migrant camps by mothers, sons and daughters. They have grappled with their own contentious and contradictory family histories in the migrant camp and the ongoing legacies of being “received” and temporarily housed in a place of containment and control. As temporary and transient places, migrant camps were never intended to be long-term “homes” for migrant families. However, many families, particularly those with single mothers or with heads of households unable to secure ongoing and full-time work, found themselves living in camps for years. A substantial cohort of post-war migrant children grew up in centres like Benalla in Victoria or Greta in New South Wales. Family life was structured around the restrictions of communal and bureaucratised living—which had many implications for how each family member related to each other and to their new country of settlement. Constraints were also placed on their employment and movements by the Department of Immigration. This paper will tie together competing theories around migrant home-building, family memory and generational memory to argue that the place of the migrant centre has come to feature prominently in the meaning-making practice of family history, particularly for child migrants grappling with unsettled and unsettling family histories. The migrant camp is a difficult heritage place from which to build family memories, especially given the spectre of the camp-as-detention-centre. Nonetheless, many who arrived as children have seen it as their task to rescue these unsettling places of settlement from obscurity and to assert their dark heritage, their place in a more intimate and diverse history of Australian migration, which shines a light on discrimination and complicates public histories of the post-war immigration scheme and settlement.